Indika Jananda Liyanage

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.

Internationalization of Higher Education, Mobility, and Multilingualism

As preconditions and consequences of internationalisation of higher education, mobility and connectedness have reconfigured the manner, scale, and extent of language contact—and of additional language learning—in the contemporary world. Multilingualism is indispensable for the processes of internationalisation as a global industry, but a parallel monolingual ideology has installed English as the de facto language of internationalised education and scholarly interaction. This multilingual/monolingual co-dependency provokes a variety of responses as dominant and local languages interact in diverse internationalised university settings in a competitive global market. This chapter provides a sketch of types of mobility and dynamic linguistic ecologies that characterise internationalised education, and introduces the issues that have provoked the chapters in the remainder of this volume. The perspectives they present on diverse and contentious dimensions of internationalisation, such as national and institutional policy settings, medium of instruction, epistemic diversity, deployment of languages to achieve local objectives in contexts of mobility, responses of local language communities, as well as implications for multilingual practices, are outlined.

Accommodating Taboo Language in English Language Teaching: Issues of Appropriacy and Authenticity.

Culturally specific language practices related to vernacular uses of taboo language such as swearing represent a socially communicative minefield for learners of English. The role of classroom learning experiences to prepare learners for negotiation of taboo language use in social interactions is correspondingly complicated and ignored in much of the language teaching research literature. English language teachers confront not only obstacles to effective development of sociolinguistic and cultural knowledge in classroom instruction, and failure of course-books to address taboo language, but also uncertainties they themselves have about addressing such obstacles and omissions. In this paper, we draw on interview data from three experienced teachers of English as an additional language, to explore their perceptions and classroom practices in relation to taboo language. In particular, we explore the situational appropriateness of mild taboo swearing using the lexical item, bloody, which has a strong positioning in Australian language culture. Dilemmas surrounding this potentially troublesome item of Australian English are foregrounded in relation to the extent to which often neglected, but widely used taboo language is actually ‘taboo’ in the classroom.

EAL teacher-agency: implications for participation in professional development

Abstract Teachers construct their practice, education and professional development within two domains of professionalism: sponsored and independent. The association between these two domains, however, is complex; it is overlapping, inseparable and sometimes uneasy. The complexity is further exacerbated by the codependent nature of association between the teacher and employment context in which teachers’ and institutions’ trajectories for professional development may vary. This situation calls into question the discrete treatment given to and received by sponsored and independent professionalism in conceptualisations of teacher professional development. We argue that, in both domains, teachers’ agency as learners is crucial for their professional development and institutional efficacies. We critique the ostensible disconnect and tensions that exist between the domains of sponsored and independent professionalism in relation to teaching English as an additional language and discuss how principles of sponsored and independent professional development initiatives can be harnessed for optimal teacher learning.

Managerialist vis-à-vis learning and development goals for EAL teachers: A case study of an in-service professional development provider

Abstract Under current Western neoliberal philosophy, promotion of efficiency and resolution of issues are typically expected to result from effective management. The education sector, too, has responded well to these expectations. Amongst such expectations, engagement in professional development activities (PDAs) by teachers of English as an additional language (EAL) is widely encouraged, considered to be essential, and usually conducted with a view to facilitate effective and effortless administration. As such, institutional offerings of PDAs driven by managerialist agendas generally tend to be ad hoc attempts to facilitate administrative decisions rather than opportunities for teachers’ lifelong learning and development. Under such circumstances, providers of in-service PDAs are faced with a conflicting dilemma – that of facilitating an effortless flow of administration and, at the same time, promoting teacher learning and development. We foreground one case of such dilemma surrounding the offering of PDAs derived as interview data from an experienced provider of in-service PDAs for EAL teachers.

Re-envisioning Teacher Education Programmes for International Students: Towards an Emancipatory and Transformative Educational Stance

Globally, the number of in-service and pre-service teachers who seek in-service professional development qualifications in countries other than their own is on the rise. This is particularly true of the Australian education context. In an era of heightened ethical awareness, we are, more than ever, encouraged to critically consider the unintended outcomes and implications resulting from the provision of such educational experiences. However, there remains a silence in many of the discussions, consultations and policy papers about teacher education programmes (TEPs), specifically about their role, efficacy and ethical practice. Using post-training reflections of a practising teacher from Fiji who completed a TEP at an Australian university, as a case in point, we explore the development of reverse ethnocentric views, whereby this teacher’s idealised conceptions of professional identity and best practice overshadowed the perception of educational settings in her home country. Indeed, as the data illustrated in this paper suggest, when overseas participants return to their home countries, there is a tendency for them to become dissatisfied with the socio-educational practices and principles of which they themselves are examples of successful outcomes. We contend that attempts to neglect the seriousness of this issue are an abrogation of responsibility and highlight the need for TEPs to develop ethically responsible pedagogical practices, which acknowledge the sensitive nature of these issues and, in so doing, promote the development of an emancipatory and transformative educational stance for all, domestic and overseas participants alike.

Accommodating Asian Eap Practices Within Postgraduate Teacher Education

A powerful discourse in the contemporary world connects the dominance of the West and education. Perceptions of educational standards and institutions of the English-speaking West as superior have synonymized a Western education with opportunities to achieve aspirations of economic growth and prosperity (Gray, 2010).

Interethnic Understanding and the Teaching of Local Languages in Sri Lanka

In precolonial times, equal socioeducational recognition accorded to local languages played a key role in promoting inter-ethnic harmony, co-existence and ‘connectedness’ between linguistically and ethnically diverse people of Sri Lanka. This history should motivate policy considerations in post-colonial situations in the country. This chapter has its focus on educational issues surrounding the promotion of local languages for interethnic harmony in Sri Lanka, where the promotion of Sinhala among minority Tamils, and Tamil among the majority Sinhalese has been the subject of many current political, policy and popular discourses. Proficiency in the local languages was encouraged actively through policies and practices during precolonial times. However, despite popular thinking that there is an acute need to promote Tamil, its manifestation as a classroom subject in school education curricula for the majority Sinhalese and minority Tamils in post-war Sri Lanka has been lost in the public and policy discourses. Using archival records and opinions expressed in newspapers as data, this chapter explores these ambiguities in attitudes, policies and practices from precolonial times to the present day.

Internationalisation of Australia-China higher education in times of globalisation

A view of internationalization of higher education as merely a response to globalization fails to acknowledge that universities have been amongst the most international of institutions for a very long time (Teichler, 2004). Globalization has certainly impacted, in some shape or form, the activities of all educational institutions and educators, and of education researchers, and in the higher education sector in particular, with its core activities of teaching and research, internationalization and international education have been, for more than two decades, catchcries for a critical role for education in the new dynamics in global relations (Universities Australia, 2012) and practices (Jones & Killick, 2013).

Ethnolinguistic diversity within Australian schools: call for a participant perspective in teacher learning

Abstract Enactment of policy on diversity and learning in Australian schools is evident in “diversity talk” in daily discourses of school teachers. From policy documents to daily staffroom conversations, there is extensive use in contemporary Western educational discourse of ethnolinguistic categories. The categorization of students to groups on the basis of cultural and linguistic attributes can potentially be counter-productive to school learning and broader practices of intercultural understanding. In this paper we critique policy-derived categorizations in Australia that encourage teachers’ perceptions of themselves as outside, rather than as participants in, the dynamic interplay of variables that characterize contemporary society. We call for increased opportunities in teacher education and teacher professional development in the areas of cultural identity and shifting cultural ethnoscapes as a basis for contextually responsive and pedagogically viable enactment of procedures and practices mandated by current policy settings with the aim of students from ethnolinguistically diverse backgrounds achieving their potential as participants in the broader community.