From western Tesol classrooms to home practice

A case study with two ‘privileged’ Saudi teachers

Bibliographic Data

ID12905804
AuthorsOsman Z Barnawi (0000-0002-0070-3473, Royal Commission Medical Center), Phan Le Ha (0000-0002-0045-9060, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume56
Issue2
Pages259-276
Publication date2014-08-21
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueCritical Studies in Education (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1750-8487 • E-ISSN: 1750-8495
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17508487.2014.951949
OpenAlexW2004453277
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited23

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at the receiving end of Western TESOL training and as the recipient of Western TESOL pedagogical experiments, it is no longer valid to assume the enlightening and educating role of such training

Mathematics education · Pedagogy · Sociology · EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning · Multilingual Education and Policy · Psychology · Second Language Learning and Teaching

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