Localizing English language teacher expertise: What, why and how?

Dr Jason Anderson presented on 'Localizing English language teacher expertise: What, why and how?' at the 7th online Future of English Language Teaching Conference.

See the video recording below:

Abstract

English language teaching (ELT) is today a global practice, occurring in almost all primary and secondary classrooms around the world, as well as a large number of tertiary and private institutions. Not only are there important differences between these different levels, there are also large differences in national contexts, local curricular objectives and the roles of Englishes and Englishing in varied communities worldwide. Yet, despite these differences, there is a pervasive tendency for innovation and teacher development in ELT to be disseminated top-down and primarily from Anglophone institutions in high-income countries (e.g., universities, training institutions, GOs and NGOs, etc.). While the problematic nature of this process has been exposed and critiqued extensively and proposals for alternative approaches have been made, the perception that ELT expertise must originate from beyond ‘our community’ still remains dominant and disempowering to English language teachers and those of us who support them. In this talk I will offer concrete suggestions for how English language teachers and teacher educators can contribute to the development of local ELT expertise in ways that are culturally appropriate, feasible and sustainable within a given context, and shareable beyond it. We will explore a number of bottom-up approaches to teacher development that teachers themselves can initiate in their own classrooms and communities, and how these approaches can be incorporated into a wider framework that can also include both teacher expertise studies (as a locally-appropriate basis for good practice) and large-scale empirical research as evidence of impact, building research expertise within the teaching community as it does.

About the presenter

Dr Jason Anderson is a multiple-award-winning teacher educator, author, consultant and researcher with experience working in education systems around the world for the British Council, UNICEF, Trinity College London and national ministries of education. He is currently based at the University of Warwick, where he researches and writes on a wide range of topics, including language teaching methodology, multilingual policy and practice, teacher expertise and teacher reflection. He is author of eight books and is the current series editor of Delta Publishing’s Ideas in Action range. His website (www.jasonanderson.org.uk)  offers a large range of free resources for teachers and teacher educators to adopt, adapt and appropriate to their own classrooms and contexts.