To Speakers Of Other Languages Teacher Research Articles

Balancing Emotions for Effective Teaching: Cultivating Teacher Well-being in TESOL

This study aims to examine the extent to which Saudi Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) teachers appreciate teacher well-being, perceive the significance of balancing emotions for effective teaching, and establish a compassionate classroom culture that promotes learner well-being and learning achievement. The study also investigates the Saudi TESOL teachers' perceptions of the importance of the mixed-methods research design for exploring teacher well-being. The study applied a quantitative design, administering an online survey to a sample of 59 Saudi TESOL teachers with varying educational levels and experience. The findings indicate that Saudi TESOL teachers consider emotions to be highly important for effective teaching, though they report placing moderate importance on cultivating strategies to support their own well-being. Additionally, they perceive the use of mixed-methods research to explore teacher well-being as moderately important. The study results indicate that prioritizing teacher well-being can significantly influence student learning outcomes underlining the role of educational institutions in considering this an important factor in quality enhancement on their campuses.

TESOL teacher educators in higher education: A review of studies from 2010 to 2020

AbstractDespite the wide recognition of language teacher educators’ contributions in the field of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), research on language teacher educators has only picked up the pace in the last decade, shedding light on their cognition, practices, and identities in relation to various personal, interpersonal, and contextual factors. This article provides a systematic and critical review of 69 empirical studies on university-based TESOL teacher educators from 2010 and 2020. A methodological review was also conducted to analyze the different research approaches employed by previous researchers. A synthesis of the identified research led to four major themes, namely: (1) a general professional state (including responsibilities, challenges and quality), (2) professional engagement (including teaching, practicum supervision, and research and publishing), (3) cognition (including beliefs, knowledge, and expertise), as well as (4) continuous learning and identity development. Through a critical discussion of the themes, the review argues against the implicit yet powerful discourse that characterizes language teacher educators as ‘supermen/superwomen’ and emphasizes the need to humanize them aswhole peopleby recognizing their unique strengths and struggles as well as diverse learning needs. The review also proposes a new research agenda to stimulate and deepen future investigations on language teacher educators in TESOL.

TPSOL Teachers' Beliefs about Providing Corrective Feedback on Learners' Writing Performance: A Transcendental Phenomenology

The purpose of this study was to investigate Teaching Persian to Speakers of Other Languages (TPSOL) teachers' beliefs about providing corrective feedback (CF) on TPSOL students' writing. To that end, the transcendental phenomenological design was used in which the experiences and practices of six TPSOL teachers (four male and two female teachers) were examined to obtain TPSOL teachers' beliefs about providing CF on students' writing. A series of phenomenological interviews were conducted with TPSOL teachers. Moreover, students' writing samples corrected by TPSOL teachers were collected and analyzed. Finally, the data were analyzed and synthesized using Giorgi's (2009) five steps framework. The findings indicated that TPSOL teachers believed that (1) providing CF is a pedagogical responsibility of TPSOL teachers, (2) providing CF on local errors is more crucial than global errors, (3) providing direct CF is more beneficial rather than providing indirect and oral CF, (4) peer feedback is not applicable in TPSOL context, and (5) providing CF in the process is more beneficial compared to providing CF as a product. TPSOL teachers believed in providing CF on their students' writings; however, they had different pedagogical beliefs concerning the types and methods of providing CF.

A systematic review of research on pre-service TESOL teachers’ emotions

The study of pre-service teachers’ emotions has long been marginalized within the field of teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL). Yet, with the advent of a sociocultural turn in the field and an emotional turn in educational science, there has been growing interest in the role of emotions in would-be teachers’ professional learning. The purpose of this study is to examine the demographic (i.e. year of publication, contributing countries and methodologies used) and topical trends concerning pre-service teacher emotionality in TESOL teacher education. For this purpose, studies published in journals that were included in Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) were reviewed and a total of 19 research articles were analyzed using both deductive and inductive analysis techniques. Concerning the demographic trends, the findings revealed that there has been an increase in the number of research articles within the last decade. Turkey and China are among the major contributing countries and the most frequently used research methodology is qualitative method. As to topic trends, “Emotions and Identity Formation”, “Emotions in relation to Language Learning” and “Emotional Responses to University Coursework” are found to be as the most popular research topics. As a result of the analysis, current gaps in research on TESOL education are identified and suggestions are made for future work.

Crossing the Split in Nepantla: (Un)successful Attempts to Dismantle a TESOL Teacher Candidate in After-Queer Research

ABSTRACT This paper neither plans to use the restorative agenda nor provides a sample of representation or voices of a teacher candidate or researcher who identifies themselves as queer. Instead, this paper looks into the researcher’s desires and imagining in analyzing a split self to think about how to problematize their thinking and actions, which should go beyond the limits of gender and sexuality or a coded term “L-G-B-T-Q,” to disrupt the existing binary of doing queer research. First, the author reviews what queer and after-queer mean in educational research and how the researchers have queered their work in the education field. Then, the author describes the nepantla concept as a theoretical lens. The autohistoria-teoria, or a personal essay that theorizes, is used as a form of self-critique in this piece. The author concludes by reexamining this paper’s central question, How did a Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) teacher candidate queer their teaching in a high school in the United States? and shares critical thoughts of what could be next in after-queer research.

Expanding teacher candidate linguistic knowledge: Analyzing recorded virtual exchange sessions

<p>Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) teacher candidates must have a working knowledge of English linguistics in order to support their students’ language development. This article reports on TESOL teacher candidates’ reflective practice to highlight how interaction with non-native speakers can develop awareness of linguistic features of the English language through virtual exchange. Sixteen teacher candidates from a university in the United States were paired with 22 undergraduate English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners from a university in Mexico. The teacher candidates completed journal entries in which they analyzed authentic language produced by their EFL partners during their virtual meetings. Teacher candidates were taking a course that covered topics related to pragmatics, semantics, morphology, phonology and syntax. Each teacher candidate submitted a final error analysis of recorded conversations to determine how many linguistic errors were made by their partners. This study describes the errors the teacher candidates were able to identify in order to explore the benefits of this reflective activity on their understanding of linguistics. This study confirms the need to utilize virtual exchange in teacher preparation programs and subsequent self-reflection in order to give teacher candidates a way to put linguistic content area into practice.</p>

Teacher candidate reflection: Benefits of using a synchronous computer-mediated communication-based virtual exchange

Fifteen participants, registered for a teaching program at a university in the United States, met with beginner and intermediate learners in their content area during a 4-week virtual exchange, via videoconferencing. These Teaching of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) teacher candidates: 1) explored language produced by learners while interacting with course content and 2) developed their reflective practices by watching their video recorded sessions. Analysis of written reflections and analysis of exchanges revealed that reflecting on a virtual exchange allowed TESOL teacher candidates to bridge theory into practice.

Implementing Dialogic Gatherings in TESOL teacher education

ABSTRACT Purpose: This article reports the implementation of a series of Dialogic Gatherings (DGs), a course component in the education of pre-service secondary-education TESOL teachers in Spain. DGs are a successful educational action based on the reading and discussion of books and academic works, which leads to a dialogic construction of knowledge among participants. Design/methodology/approach: Our case study involved seven students, enrolled on a Master's Degree in Secondary Education, with a specialisation in teaching English. Information was gathered during 10 DG sessions and from initial and final reports and student notebooks, as well as from the trainer's observations. Findings: The findings suggested that DGs engaged participants in a critical understanding of the teaching-learning process of English as a Foreign Language, assisting their teacher identity construction process. In addition, the findings pointed both to the reading of scientific sources and to the dialogic methodology as key inputs for the promotion of critically responsive practices for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). Originality/value: This exploratory study illustrates the relevance of providing future teachers with meaningful opportunities to reflect upon and to build critical knowledge through the dialogic reading of primary scientific sources as part of the TESOL process.

Reflective practice framework for TESOL teachers: one teacher’s reflective journey

ABSTRACTJust as in the field of general education, scholars within the field of teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) have also struggled to come to a consensus as to how reflective practice should be operationalized with many different approaches suggesting a retrospective approach to questioning about practice. As a result, many of these approaches have led to a type of routinization of reflection. Worried about such routinization of reflection, Farrell developed a more holistic approach to reflective practice that recognizes the spiritual, moral, and emotional aspects of reflection, as well as the usual retrospective questions about practice. This paper outlines a case study of the reflections of one experienced TESOL teacher teaching in South Korea using Farrell’s framework for reflecting on practice that included reflections on his philosophy, principles, theory, practice, and beyond practice. The results revealed three common themes of approachability, art-oriented conceptions, and curiosity that emerged in all aspects of his reflection as uniquely influential parts of a larger whole. Thus, Farrell’s holistic framework for teacher reflection employed in this study provided multiple filters through which these various parts could be viewed.

Internal and external forces: Technology uses among English language teacher educators in South Korea

Surprisingly little has been written about the technology-related roles and practices of teacher educators. Even less is known about the adoption of technologies by teacher educators in the field of teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL), even in the technology-rich nation of South Korea. The purpose of the present in-depth instrumental multiple case study was to explore internal and external forces in the integration of digital technologies into the pedagogical practices of TESOL teacher educators at a university in South Korea. Data collected over 20 weeks included four rounds of semi-structured interviews and two sets of classroom observations for each of the five focal participants, interviews with an administrator, written reflections, field notes, photographs, and document review. Five key forces were identified that worked in tension with voluntary use of technologies to mediate their extensive use in the teacher educators’ practice. This study contributes to research gaps on the roles and technology-related practices of TESOL teacher educators. TESOL program administrators and teacher educators will particularly benefit from the light shed on teacher educator cognitions and praxis in this study.

Investigating TESOL Teachers' Awareness of Critical Pedagogy at Higher Education Institutions in Oman: Implications for Critical Professional Development

Critical Pedagogy (CP) has been proposed as an alternative pedagogy capable of meeting the complex demands of teaching English within a particular sociopolitical context. Despite the fact that CP has been present in education since the 1960s, much of the research on CP has been conducted recently in Teaching of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) contexts. There is a growing but as yet small amount of research that addresses the usage of CP in TESOL contexts, to which this study hopes to make a useful contribution. Therefore, this study investigates the extent to which TESOL teachers from four higher education institutions in the Sultanate of Oman are aware of CP. In order to achieve this, a questionnaire is administered to 178 English Language Teachers. The main findings reveal a widespread lack of awareness of the concept of CP among TESOL teachers. Nonetheless, minorities of teachers are aware of CP and implement it in a limited fashion in their classes. On the other hand, there are teachers who, whilst being aware of CP, do not implement it. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Australian TESOL Teachers’ Cultural Perceptions of Students

ABSTRACTOver the last decade, research in the field of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) has increasingly focused on the relationship between culture and learning. Researchers such as Kumaravadivelu (2003) have been vocal in their opposition to the practice of cultural stereotyping. In the current study, Holliday’s (2005) model of Culturism was used as a theoretical basis. Six Australian TESOL teachers were interviewed to determine the nature and extent of the cultural stereotypes that they held, particularly as they pertained to specific learning-related behaviours. A qualitative analysis of the data revealed that teachers most often grouped students in terms of national or regional cultures and believed that cultural background strongly influenced student learning behaviour, resulting in the formation of a number of stereotypes. Despite this, the findings also demonstrated that teachers were self-aware of the pitfalls of cultural stereotyping and took other factors influencing student behaviour into consideration.

Anniversary article: The practices of encouraging TESOL teachers to engage in reflective practice: An appraisal of recent research contributions

Within the field of education, reflective practice has become a very popular concept within teacher education and development programs. The general consensus is that teachers who are encouraged to engage in reflective practice can gain new insight of their practice. There have been similar developments in the field of teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL), where the allure of reflective practice seems to have also been embraced as an important educational paradigm that should be supported in teacher education and development programs. However, we really do not know what research has been conducted on the practices that encourage TESOL teachers to participate in reflective practice. This article presents a review of recent research that has been published in academic journals over the past five years (2009–2014) on the practices that encourage TESOL teachers to reflect.

From western TESOL classrooms to home practice: a case study with two ‘privileged’ Saudi teachers

This article is located in the debates concerning the continued problems underlying the cultural politics of English-speaking Western countries’ Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) programmes and ‘Western’ pedagogies. It examines two Saudi TESOL teachers’ pedagogical enactments in their home teaching contexts after returning from their Western-based TESOL programmes. It aims to obtain insights into questions of knowledge construction, pedagogy and training in Western TESOL programmes and their impacts on these teachers’ teaching in Saudi settings. We argue that these teachers have never been passive in the entire process nor have they been naïve about the cultural politics of TESOL. They have appeared to proactively take advantage of being trained in the West to teach effectively and to appropriate their given privileged status in the home contexts. They have also appeared to do so with awareness and with a strong sense of agency. This very aspect of agency, as we argue, deserves substantial scholarly attention in future research. We also argue that to move beyond the mindset that positions periphery teachers at the receiving end of Western TESOL training and as the recipient of Western TESOL pedagogical experiments, it is no longer valid to assume the enlightening and educating role of such training.

TESOL professional standards in the “Asian century”: dilemmas facing Australian TESOL teacher education

Australian teacher education programmes that prepare teachers of English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) are confronting the nexus of two facets of globalization: transformations in the Asian region, captured in the notion of the “Asian century”, and shifting conceptions of professionalism in TESOL in non-compulsory education. In booming Asian economies, English language learning is integral to the demand for high-quality education. This has produced increases in TESOL Teacher Education Programme (TTEP) enrolments of both domestic Australian students and international students from Asia. Growth in demand for TTEPs has necessitated that they cater to student diversity, and the intended contexts of practice. This demand has coincided with a concurrent movement towards professional standards for TESOL that, we argue, confronts complexities around quality, accountability, and professional identity and achieving conceptual and contextual coherence. Drawing on discourses of managerialism and performativity, this paper explores tensions between increased student demands for TTEPs, professional standards discourses which are part of the global policy discourses on teacher quality, and the achievement of programmatic conceptual and contextual coherence from the perspective of Australian TTEPs.

The role of TESOL in educating for peace

As communication specialists, teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) professionals should be at the forefront of promoting peaceful interaction. Yet, at present they only play a peripheral role in educating for peace. The present article investigates the interplay between English, as expressed in terms of being a global language, and the social responsibility of TESOL teachers. It will focus on the ways in which TESOL teachers can engage with, and contribute to, the establishment of sustainable peaceful communities. The current teaching paradigm, in which communicative language teaching and content-based approaches are dominant, offers TESOL teachers the possibility to engage learners with issues surrounding peace and the creation of a peaceful future. However, teachers should not only provide learners with the opportunity to consider, understand, and appreciate global issues and peace-related content, but should also provide them with the necessary skills to address everyday problems peacefully. By adding dimensions of social consciousness to their curriculum, TESOL teachers can equip learners with the necessary skills to contribute positively to both local and global society.

Creating Learning Outcomes for a TESOL Teacher Preparation Program

This article shares the results of a multisemester effort to create learning outcomes and related assessment measures for a graduate‐level teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) teacher preparation program. It starts by explaining what learning outcomes are, why they are important, and how to create them. It then describes the authors' experience, in terms of the processes involved as well as the actual learning outcomes produced. Insights from this explanation and case study will benefit other TESOL teacher educators who face similar tasks.

“I Listened to Korean Society. I Always Heard that Women Should be this Way …”: The Negotiation and Construction of Gendered Identities in Claiming a Dominant Language and Race in the United States

Based on a year-long, qualitative study of five East Asian women, pre-service teachers enrolled in U.S. Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) teacher education programs, this article examines one Korean woman's journey as she navigates through her multiple identities as a daughter, spouse, mother, and language teacher inside and outside of Korea and the United States. In narrative accounts audiotaped during in-depth interviews conducted over a period of seven months, Han Nah shared experiences that have been shaped by her gendered identities while also being transformed by these identities. Han Nah's identities are viewed as a site of struggle in multiple contexts: (1) Han Nah was influenced by how her parents positioned her as a traditional Korean woman in the larger Korean patriarchal society, which in turn impacted her own decisions navigating through both Korean and U.S. educational and professional contexts; and (2) Han Nah's “mothering” and “spousal” identities influenced and somewhat superseded her professional aspirations, which led Han Nah to claim her dominant language and race in the Western educational system. This article concludes with TESOL teacher education implications.

The Pedagogical Knowledge Base of Four TESOL Teachers

Many researchers have called for a broadening of the theoretical base of language teacher development programs to include gathering information not only on what teachers do in the classroom, but also on what they know, and how this knowledge is transferred to their teaching behavior, especially as they gain more experience in the classroom. However, in the field of teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL), studies of teachers' knowledge base and its development are relatively scarce (Borg, 2003; Gatbonton, 2000; Johnston & Goettsch, 2000). This qualitative study is a partial replication of Gatbonton's (2000) study, using her stimulated recall methodology and coding features, but it also extends her study by incorporating a number of key changes. The data derive from intact classes of low intermediate to advanced level students in general English, Business English, and Cambridge Advanced Certificate classes. The study examines the reports of 4 teachers, with differing amounts of TESOL teaching experience, on their thinking about their activities in these classrooms.

Critical content and cultural knowledge for teachers of english to speakers of other languages

There is an ongoing debate in the area of teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) about what should constitute the knowledge base of language teachers. This article offers an analysis of the major opposing views in the debate and suggests an alternative critical approach to language teacher knowledge. While recognising various types of teacher knowledge, the author focuses on two types: content and cultural knowledge. The author argues that content knowledge should be informed by critical pedagogy and that cultural knowledge needs to include more than mere factual information about ways of life in other countries. Cultural knowledge needs to be informed by a deep sense of commitment on the part of the TESOL teacher to understanding his/her students’ social and cultural contexts and how these shape their approach to learning and attitudes to English as a second or foreign language.