The Career Trajectories of English Language Teachers

Contents [Please click on author name for summary]

Introduction

The Career Trajectories of English Language Teachers identifies, illustrates, compares, contrasts and provides informed reflective commentary on the diverse career trajectories of English language teachers, teacher educators and researchers in this field internationally.

The literature (e.g. Nias, 1989; Elbaz, 1990; Hogan et al, 2003) frequently depicts teachers’ careers as a simple progression from novice to expert. Other research perhaps more accurately states that there are different levels of expertise in different fields and even experts can be novices in some fields. However, the career trajectories of English language teachers are particularly interesting, often including diverse accumulated employment experiences that span multiple national and international contexts. Further to this, their teaching assignments exceed the boundaries of teaching the English language as an academic discipline (Valdés, 2001) and extend to negotiating multiple literacies (Athanases, 2015), status, position and earning power in various countries and societies (Cummins, 1994, 2000; Fecho & Allen, 2003; Hadi-Tabassum, 2006).

As the status of English language teaching tends to be socially constructed, career trajectories within this profession can be influenced in negative, positive and neutral ways, and a single career trajectory can include strategic upwards, downwards and/or sideways moves. In responding to the changing needs of learners, English language teaching now extends beyond simply facilitating overseas travel experiences and/or teaching English language in one’s home country. In the western world, international immigration has increased the need for English language teachers. In addition, globalisation has had positive effects on the status of English language teaching, with the field increasingly being linked to advanced academic study and enhanced work possibilities in diverse areas (Paltridge & Starfield, 2012).

Interestingly, the literature also reveals underlying tensions of being caught in the politically charged ‘crossfire’ (Cummins, 2000) of language policy and implementation (Menken, 2008) that may impact on teachers’ career trajectories. For instance, Davison (2001) highlights how educational policies in Australia have eroded the status of English language teaching. Haworth (2008, 2009) notes similar effects in New Zealand schools where English language teaching is often undertaken by paraprofessionals, and positions tend to be part time and short term. In addition, Thornbury (2001) refers to ‘the unbearable lightness’ (p. 391) of English as a foreign language teaching, due to the phenomenon of international backpackers who are employed as English teachers simply because they are speakers of English rather than them having any relevant professional qualifications. Nonetheless, there is no doubt that many English language teachers, teacher educators and teacher researchers build satisfying careers that take an upwards trajectory, so we are especially interested in how that occurs.

This book provides a significant contribution to the wider body of scholarly literature on teachers’, teacher educators’ and teacher researchers’ working lives and careers. Past studies have tended to focus on a single context. In contrast, this book provides a unique insight into the common themes and concerns in the profession nationally and internationally, as well as exploring how English language teachers, teacher educators and teacher researchers navigate their individual pathways to success, overcoming the contextually embedded tensions and challenges that exist in diverse national and international settings along the way. Despite the inherent tensions that exist in the field, it has been said that accounts of teachers’ experiences are ‘the landscape within which the work of teachers can be seen as making sense’ (Elbaz, 1990, p. 32). Therefore, this book should be of interest to researchers, to those wishing to pursue a career in English language teaching, and to those who work as teacher educators in this field. In examining and comparing the diversity of career trajectories of professional English language teachers locally and internationally, as well as the critical turning points in their careers, a number of themes that appear to influence resilience in building a worthwhile professional career in this field rise to the fore.

In Section 1, contributors provide insights on their research into the working lives of teachers and teacher educators, and the local and international contexts against which their career trajectories play out. The authors’ research methods draw on narrative inquiry, rivers of life, life histories, self-study, policy analysis and critical dialogic approaches. These chapters come from China, Turkey, the United States, India, Malaysia and Australia.

In Section 2, the focus shifts more towards socio-political contexts in teaching and teacher education, the experiences of developing identity in these contexts and the role of self-determination in constructing, reconstructing and co-constructing career trajectories in challenging contexts. Contributors in this section draw on cultural and linguistic autobiographical research in social and political contexts, teacher education programme analysis, emancipatory reflective practitioner research, community of practice, critical analysis of institutional practices, video case studies, narrative inquiry, critical incidents and rivers of life. These chapters come from Brazil, Mexico, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, Chile, China, Thailand, Australia, Greece and New Zealand.

In the final chapter, conclusions and reflective commentary on the field both now and in the future are provided, and an illustration of the unfolding nature of English language teachers’ career trajectories is shared.

References
Athanases, S. (2015) Mentoring and Mediating the Interface of Multiple Knowledges in Learning to Teach Challenging Content, in C. Craig & L. Orland-Barak (Eds) International Teacher Education: promising pedagogies. Bingley: Emerald.
Cummins, J. (1994) Knowledge, Power, and Identity in Teaching English as a Second Language, in F. Genesee (Ed.) Educating Second Language Children: the whole child, the whole curriculum, the whole community, pp. 33-58. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cummins, J. (2000) Language, Power, and Pedagogy: bilingual children in the crossfire. Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, vol. 23. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Davison, C. (2001) Identity and Ideology: the problem of defining and defending ESL-ness, in B. Mohan, C. Leung & C. Davison (Eds) English as a Second Language in the Mainstream: teaching, learning and identity, pp. 71-90. New York: Longman.
Elbaz, F. (1990) Knowledge and Discourse: the evolution of research on teacher thinking, in C. Day, M. Pope & P. Denicolo (Eds) Insight into Teacher Thinking and Practice, pp. 15-42. New York: Falmer Press.
Fecho, B. & Allen, J. (2003) Teacher Inquiry into Literacy, Social Justice, and Power, in J. Flood, D. Lapp, J. Squire & J. Jensen (Eds) Handbook of Research on Teaching the English Language Arts, 2nd edn, pp. 232-246. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Hadi-Tabassum, S. (2006) Language, Space and Power: a critical look at bilingual education. Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, vol. 55. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Haworth, P. (2008) Crossing Borders to Teach English Language Learners, Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice (Journal of the International Association for Teachers and Teachers [ISATT]), 14(5 6) (December), 411-430.
Haworth, P. (2009) The Quest for a Mainstream EAL Pedagogy, Teachers College Record, 111(9), 2179-2208.
Hogan, T., Rabinowitz, M. & Craven, J.A. (2003) Representation in Teaching: inferences from research of expert and novice teachers, Educational Psychologist, 38(4), 235-247. http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/S15326985EP3804_3
Menken, K. (2008) English Learners Left Behind: standardized testing as language policy. Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, vol. 65. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Nias, J. (1989) Primary Teachers Talking: a study of teaching as work. London: Routledge.
Paltridge, B. & Starfield, S. (2012) The Handbook of English for Specific Purposes. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9781118339855
Thornbury, S. (2001) The Unbearable Lightness of EFL, ELT Journal, 55(4), 391-396. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/elt/55.4.391
Valdés, G. (2001) Learning and Not Learning English: Latino students in American schools. New York: Teachers College Press.
 

Contributors

Mary Jane Abrahams, teacher of English, MA in Education, has taught at university level for over 35 years. Her main interest is teacher education. She has been involved in training mentor trainers and then mentors for schools in Chile, working very closely with the Ministry of Education. She was a member of the team who wrote the standards for initial teacher education in English. She was involved in the new curriculum design for UAH. She is the head of the English Department at the School of Education in Universidad Alberto Hurtado, the Jesuit University in Chile. She is also the president of TESOL Chile, a post she has held for the last ten years.

Steven Z. Athanases (PhD, Stanford University) is a professor in the School of Education, University of California, Davis. He studies diversity and equity in the teaching and learning of English and in teacher education. He co-edited Mentors in the Making: developing new leaders for new teachers (Teachers College Press) and participated in curriculum working groups for the first teachers’ college in Ecuador. His articles on language teaching and English language learners appear in the Journal of Teacher Education, The New Educator, and the Bilingual Research Journal and in relevant book chapters in Teacher Preparation for Linguistically Diverse Classrooms (ed. T. Lucas) and L2 Writing in Secondary Classrooms (ed. L.C. de Oliveira & T. Silva). A former high school English teacher, he is the recipient of numerous teaching honors, Spencer and McDonnell Foundation postdoctoral fellowships, and research awards from the Association of Teacher Educators and the National Council of Teachers of English.

Ida Fatimawati bt Adi Badiozaman graduated from the University of Malaya (UM), Malaysia with a Bachelor of Education Honours degree, majoring in TESL, in 2002. After spending two years teaching English and English literature in a residential school in Kuching, she went on to pursue her MA TESOL degree at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand. She then obtained her PhD in Education (TESOL) from Massey University, New Zealand in 2012. While undertaking her PhD, she worked at two tertiary institutions, International Pacific College and Professional and Continuing Education (PaCE) in Massey University. She was also a tutor for the Licentiate Diploma and Certificate in TESOL (Trinity College London), specializing in academic writing papers. She is now the MA TESOL Coordinator and Associate Dean of Academic Operations in the Faculty of Language and Communication in Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak Campus.

Leslie C. Banes (MA, Education) is a doctoral candidate and associate instructor in the School of Education, University of California, Davis. She draws on five years as a bilingual classroom teacher in the United States and Spain and two years working with bilingual pre-schoolers and their parents in a math intervention program, and has experience teaching English as a second language and math in Spanish to bilingual adults. Her research interests include equity in mathematics education and the relationship between mathematics and language learning/literacy. Her recent work involves the effect of classroom mathematical discussion on emergent bilinguals, formative assessment in mathematics, and supporting linguistically diverse elementary students in writing mathematical explanations. She is currently involved in professional development programs with STEM teachers in California and Beijing and recently published an article on prospective bilingual teachers in the Bilingual Research Journal.

Johanna Boone is an elementary school teacher in a Title I school in Provo, Utah. She received her master’s degree in teacher education from Brigham Young University. While she is not currently engaged in formal research, her research interests include English language learners, immigration experiences, and the impact of school culture on teachers, students and student achievement.

Jill Brown (BA, Grad Dip Ed. M.TESOL, PhD) is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Education at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. She started work at Monash after twenty-five years as an English language teacher in government secondary schools. She has extensive experience in teaching and supervising international students. Jill recently completed an international study of the ways in which children construct minority identity through drawings and is currently researching teacher work and identity in diverse contexts. She has also published on research student narratives as well as on second-language identity in narratives of study abroad.

Cheryl Craig, PhD, is a Professor and Coordinator of Teaching and Teacher Education at the University of Houston, an official Asian-serving and Hispanic-serving research-intensive university that is the second most diverse higher learning institution in the United States. She is an American Educational Research Association (AERA) Fellow and a Lifetime Achievement Awardee for AERA’s Division B (Curriculum). In 2015, she received the Michael Huberman Award for her Research Contributions to Understanding the Lives of Teachers. Currently, she is Executive Editor of Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice and sits on the editorial boards of Reflective Practice and the International Journal of Education and the Arts. She is the Past-Secretary (2009 15) of the International Study Association on Teachers and Teaching.

Ramona Maile Cutri is an Associate Professor of Multicultural Education at Brigham Young University’s Teacher Education Department. Her research explores pre-service teacher candidates’ identification of social privileges; the emotional work involved in multicultural teacher education; cross-class identities; and how technological integration can help engage pre-service teacher candidates intellectually and emotionally in the ethical, dispositional and pedagogical issues related to critical multicultural teacher education.

Leslie Gauna is a full-time Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Houston. She teaches bilingual education and English as a Second Language courses for teacher candidates and graduate students. She conducts qualitative research into teachers’ language and cultural practices in the classroom. She has extensive knowledge and experience in teaching at all grade levels in multilingual schools with bilingual, dual-language and English as a Second Language programs in Texas. She has worked with migrant populations in urban school projects related to multicultural, bilingual, prevention of violence, gender and community participation issues both in the United States and in Argentina. She obtained her EdD in Curriculum and Instruction from U of H after completing a critical narrative inquiry study focusing on the narratives of first-year bilingual teachers who themselves had been raised as linguistically diverse students.

Telma Gimenez holds a PhD from Lancaster University, UK and is an associate professor in the Department of Modern Foreign Languages at the State University of Londrina, Brazil. She supervises research at the postgraduate level and facilitates preservice teachers’ courses. Her primary research focus is on educational policies and their impact on the lives of teachers and students in schools in a globalizing world. Her current research examines ways in which the developments in the field of English as a global language can be incorporated into teacher education programs. Dr Gimenez is a researcher funded by CNPq (Science and Technology Agency) and has published more than 100 publications in refereed journals, book chapters and conference proceedings. She served as a member of the Advisory Board of ALAB – Brazilian Association of Applied Linguistics (2014-15).

Penny Haworth, PhD, is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Education, Massey University, New Zealand. She teaches courses on learning/teaching English as an additional language, particularly for academic and specific purposes. She has led research projects in primary schools, adult education, teacher education, and a Ministry of Education–funded Early Childhood Education Centre of Innovation. As well as her interest in career trajectories of English language teachers, Penny’s research includes teacher beliefs and change processes in linguistically and culturally diverse settings; student teacher efficacy in low socioeconomic settings; globalization impacts on literacy; and pedagogies for enhancing bilingual learning. Penny has served on Ministry of Education advisory panels for TESOL and literacy; she is a past regional chairperson and past national executive member of the New Zealand TESOL Association; and she has recently completed six years on the Executive Committee of the International Study Association on Teachers and Teaching.

Amanda Howard has spent many years working as an English language teacher, teacher trainer and lecturer in the Middle East and the UK. She gained her MEd TESOL from the University of Leeds in the 1990s and a PGCE from Melbourne University a few years later, followed by a PhD from the University of Warwick in ELT and Applied Linguistics. She has been continuously involved in postgraduate education for the last fifteen years and currently works as a freelance educator and researcher. Her interests cover observation and feedback in educational settings, teacher evaluation, teacher development and teaching young learners, and she has presented and written extensively on these topics. Her most recent publication has been a collection of papers entitled ‘Teacher Evaluation in Second Language Education’, co-edited with Helen Donaghue and published by Bloomsbury.

Hafdís Ingvarsdóttir is Professor of Education in the School of Education at the University of Iceland. She started out as a secondary school teacher but has been involved in teacher education for the last three decades. She was head of the teacher education programme at the university for a number of years. Her main research interests are teacher education and teacher growth with special emphasis on foreign language teaching and learning. Presently, she is involved in two main research projects: a nationwide project on the status and use of English in Iceland, and a project investigating pedagogical practices in upper-secondary schools.

Tomáš Janík is the head of the Institute for Research in School Education, Masaryk University, Brno (Czech Republic) and former editor-in-chief of Pedagogická orientace, one of the leading Czech academic journals on educational research. His research interests lie in the areas of instructional design and quality of instruction (video studies), curriculum, and teacher education. Together with his team, he carried out a large research study accompanying the implementation of the new curricular reform in the Czech Republic.

Parussaya Kiatkheeree holds a PhD in Education from Massey University, New Zealand. She is a lecturer in teaching English in the Faculty of Education in Suratthani Rajabhat University (SRU), where she also serves as the director of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Studies and Development Centre. Her key responsibility in this centre is for building academic collaboration with the leading universities at both national and international levels. Her particular research focus is in the area of teaching English. She also has an interest in enhancing professional development for academic and support staff. In addition, she is responsible for the master’s degree programme in Teaching English for Academic and Occupational Purposes.

Stavroula Kaldi is an Associate Professor in Educational Studies in the Department of Primary Education at the University of Thessaly, Greece. She studied at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece (BA) and at Sussex University, UK (MA & PhD). She has extensive experience in teaching and research in higher education and her research interests include project-based learning, cooperative learning, teacher education and teacher professional development. Her research is published in various refereed international journals, conferences and volumes.

Emmanuel Konsolas is an Assistant Professor in Teaching Methodology and its Applications at the Aegean University, Greece. He has a BA degree from the Department of Primary School Education of the Aegean University (Greece) and a BA degree in Philosophy, Pedagogy and Psychology from the University of Athens (Greece). He was awarded his doctorate (PhD) by the Department of Philosophy, Pedagogy and Psychology of the University of Athens (Greece). He has published more than 55 articles and has presented papers at international and Greek conferences.

John McKeown, EdD, hails from Canada and is the director of the School of Foreign Languages at MEF University, Istanbul. He has served as a senior lecturer in English language teaching, as an assistant professor of education, and as school administrator and project manager. As Director of Academics for Mosaica Education, he led school reform initiatives in the Gulf States. He has lived and worked in Turkey for over 10 years and has held administrative, teaching and consultative positions there.

Michael McMurray has been involved in the English-teaching field since 1980, teaching all levels and types of developmental as well as credit English courses in addition to ESL/EFL courses, including foundation program courses, ESP courses, and a host of continuing education courses. He has also served as curriculum designer for two internationally accredited foundation programs. His first 15 years were spent at community colleges in the Dallas area; since 1994 he has taught in the Arabian Gulf.

Eva Minaříková is a research assistant at the Institute for Research in School Education, Masaryk University, Brno (Czech Republic) and the associate editor of Pedagogická orientace, one of the leading Czech academic journals on educational research. Her research focuses on the use of video in preservice and in-service teacher education.

Stefinee Pinnegar is a teacher educator in the McKay School of Education at Brigham Young University. She is one of the founders of the Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices research movement. As Acting Dean of the Invisible College for Research on Teaching, she is concerned with developing arenas for conversations about teaching and learning research. She is most interested in what and how teachers know as teachers. She has published in the areas of teacher education, narrative, and self-study research and research methodology.

Michaela Píšová is an associate professor at the Institute for Research in School Education, Masaryk University, Brno (Czech Republic). She has conducted research on teachers and teacher education and has been one of the leading figures in designing and implementing innovations in teacher education in the Czech Republic in the last decade. Together with her team, she has carried out an extensive research study on expert teachers of English as a Foreign Language.

Tara Ratnam is an independent teacher educator and researcher from India. She received her PhD in English Language Teaching from the English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU), Hyderabad, India. She is the research advisor to the Indian Institute of Montessori Studies (IIMS), Bangalore, India. She pursues research on fostering teacher learning and change in reflective communities of inquiry focusing on the cultural, historical and institutional forces that mediate teachers’ thinking and the resulting tension-laden path they negotiate. She is also keenly interested in the issue of diversity and in providing socially sensitive learning support to the culturally diverse student populations. Her theoretical perspective is interdisciplinary and includes the works of theorists such as Mikhail Bakhtin (philosophy of language), Lev Vygotsky (cultural historical psychology), William Perry (adult development) and Paulo Freire (critical pedagogy), among others. She is the Indian representative of the International Study Association on Teachers and Teaching (ISATT).

Pablo Silva Ríos, teacher of English, MA in Applied Linguistics, has taught students of all ages since 1993. Also, he has worked in curriculum design and in projects of assessment for learning at the Ministry of Education. He was a member of the team that wrote the standards for EFL initial teacher education in Chile. Currently, he is the director of the English Pedagogy Program at Universidad Alberto Hurtado. : psilva@uahurtado.cl

Nora M. Basurto-Santos holds a PhD in ELT and Applied Linguistics from Warwick University in the UK and an MSc in TEFL from Aston University, England. She has been a teacher trainer and has taught EFL and other subjects in the area of applied linguistics for over 30 years in the undergraduate and postgraduate programmes at the University of Veracruz, Mexico. She is particularly interested in doing research that involves fieldwork in different educational settings within the public sector. At present, she is a full-time researcher at the University of Veracruz and is a member of the Sistema Nacional de Investigadores – CONACyT. In the past 7 years, she, along with her colleagues from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia-Bogotá, has been involved in the organization of an international conference on research in foreign languages. She has many national and international publications and has been a keynote speaker at several international conferences.

Phiona Stanley has degrees from Edinburgh, Sydney and Monash universities. She is a Senior Lecturer in Education at UNSW Australia in Sydney. She has worked in TESOL in Peru, Poland, Qatar, China, the UK and Australia, and as a teacher, CELTA trainer, director of studies, academic operations manager, and editor. Her research focuses on intercultural competence in educational contexts, particularly language education, and she is currently working on a book for Routledge on backpackers learning Spanish and interculturality in Latin America.

Ioanna Syriou is a secondary school principal in Athens. She has a Master of Arts in Education and is a doctoral candidate at the Aegean University. She is mainly interested in issues regarding innovative teaching practices in school, student assessment and school evaluation.

Amira Traish is currently Foundation Program Coordinator of the English Language Centre (ELC) at the University of Sharjah in the UAE. She graduated from the University of Akron in May 2005 with a Master of Arts degree in Literature and a certificate in Composition. In 2014, she received her EdD in TESOL from the British University of Dubai. Her dissertation addressed the issue of use of the primary language (L1) to teach the target language (L2). She is interested in curriculum development, and her current target demographic for research and application in this field is young adult learners. She has facilitated curricular changes to the Foundation program at the University of Sharjah as well as the Community College. Sitting on the board of reviewers for Neem Tree Press, a London-based publishing company, Amira also reviews books for a number of regional publishers, applying her EFL/ESL expertise to assist them in achieving their objectives.

Liping Wei, EdD, is an assistant professor in the School of Education, Health Professions, & Human Development at the University of Houston-Victoria, USA. Her TESOL teaching experience has spanned both EFL and ESL contexts. Her research program mainly draws on narrative inquiry and teachers’ reflective practices. She has wide research interests including ESL teachers’ professional development, TESOL pedagogy, ESL teacher as researcher, international education, and multicultural education. Her current research interests centre on employing narrative inquiry to investigate the teaching experience of ELL teachers and the educational experience of linguistic minority students. She has published papers in various journals and presented her research internationally, nationally and regionally.

Joanna W. Wong is Assistant Professor in the College of Education, California State University, Monterey Bay. She earned her doctorate at UC Davis in Language, Literacy, and Culture with designated emphases in Second Language Acquisition and Writing, Rhetoric, and Composition Studies. Her research interests include second-language writing, bilingualism, and teacher education to serve non-dominant populations. She draws on over 14 years of experience in urban elementary education for her research, teaching and professional development and has researched elementary bilingual writers’ understandings, expectations and practices. She published an article on metalinguistic awareness as a resource for potential bilingual teachers in the Bilingual Research Journal and has a book chapter in press in Second Language Writing in Elementary Classrooms (ed. L.C. de Oliveira & T. Silva). She is currently a fellow with the National Council of Teachers of English Cultivating New Voices of Scholars of Color program.

Luxin Yang is a Professor at the National Research Center for Foreign Language Education at Beijing Foreign Studies University, China. She holds a PhD in Second Language Education from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. Her research interests include foreign language teacher education, second language writing, and academic literacy development. She has articles published in such international journals as Journal of Second Language Writing, Language Teaching Research, Language, Culture and Curriculum, System, Journal of English for Academic Purposes. Since she returned to China in 2006, she has paid special attention to school EFL education in China and recently completed a national project on improving the quality of EFL teaching and learning at schools in China. She is now working with Dr Shijing Xu of University of Windsor, Canada on a large SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada) partnership grant project Reciprocal Learning in Teacher Education and School Education between China and Canada.

Jianfen Ying is an associate professor in the College of Foreign Languages of Zhejiang Normal University, China. She is dean of the International Department of the college. She has been teaching English since 1997. In 2011 she won the honor of the ‘Provincial Excellent Teacher’ in Zhejiang Province. She was a visiting scholar at the University of Houston in 2014. Her research interests are English teacher development and learning community building.

Zhilian Zheng is an associate professor in the College of Foreign Languages of Zhejiang Normal University, China. She was vice-dean of the English Department from 2008 to 2014. She has been teaching English as a Foreign Language since 1985 in the college. She specializes in research on exploratory practice in the English curriculum as one of the main initiators of the RICH programme. Since 2002, her research interests have extended to teacher preparation, teacher training and exploratory practice. In 2012 she was named the ‘National Excellent Supervisor for Postgraduates’ in China.  

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