Placing elementary-school teachers at the vanguard of modernisation: language use and emergent identity among English-medium teachers in the UAE

ABSTRACT

In the midst of immense societal change, this paper examines the complex forces at work in novice Arabic-speaking teachers’ choice of language in English-medium primary classrooms in the United Arab Emirates. Thirty newly-graduated Emirati English language teachers, working in kindergarten or primary government schools in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, participated in a survey that investigated language choice in the classroom. Data was collected using self-reported quantitative and qualitative methods, summarised and analysed. Main findings identified a pragmatic willingness and enthusiasm among participants to use their first language in second language English classrooms not found in previous studies. The researchers also uncovered evidence of an emerging bilingual professional identity that sets participants apart from their monolingual colleagues. Pedagogical implications for language teachers, administrators, teacher trainers, and educational policy-makers are presented and discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• UAE
• L1
• L2
• educational policy
• novice teachers
• teacher identity

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank all the teachers that willingly gave up their time to participate in this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The UAE guaranteed free K-12 education for all its children. After kindergarten (which is a two-year programme), schooling is organised into three levels: cycle 1, grades 1–5; cycle 2, grades 6–9; and cycle 3, grades 10–12 (Going forward, the terms “cycle 1” and “elementary school” will be used interchangeably). Kindergarten and cycle 1 schools are mixed gender, but beyond the 5^th on the line grade, students are taught in single-gender environments.

2. AMTs lead courses in Arabic language, Islamic education, social studies, art, music, and physical education (Ridge, Kippels, and Farah 2017).

3. “Artificially” here refers to the fact that multilingual communities often use a mix of languages in everyday life, while language instruction is organised entirely differently, being separated into monolingual classrooms with the target language as the only acceptable code.

4. According to Salah and Farrah (2012), teachers in Hebron used limited Arabic to translate abstract words, facilitate communication, reduce students’ stress, check comprehension, and more.

5. It is worth mentioning that despite English’s status in Abu Dhabi’s school system, several studies including this one, have shown preference for content courses to be taught in Arabic (Findlow 2000; Solloway 2016).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Keith Kennetz

Keith Kennetz holds a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Georgia, Athens, USA. He has taught English, German and applied linguistics in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East and recently participated in the U.S. Department of State’s English Language Fellow exchange programme in Elbasan, Albania. His research interests include perceptual dialectology, language planning and teacher training and development.

David Litz

David Litz holds an EdD from the University of Calgary, Canada. He presently works as an Assistant Professor and Division Head of the Assessment and School Evaluation Division at Emirates College for Advanced Education (ECAE) in Abu Dhabi, UAE. He is currently teaching courses on educational practice, teaching and learning, educational effectiveness and improvement, and school leadership and management. He has also previously taught in K-12 and higher education in South Korea and Canada. His research interests include comparative education, educational administration and leadership, as well as educational policy in the MENA region.

Julie Riddlebarger

Julie Riddlebarger has taught in the USA and UAE; she is currently an instructor at the Defense Language Institute English Language Center in San Antonio, Texas. Her research interests include second language writing and teacher training and continuing professional development.

Lilly Tennant

Lilly Tennant holds a PhD in Special Education, University of Arizona, USA, worked as an Associate Professor at the Emirates College for Advanced Education in Abu Dhabi, and her expertise is in teacher education. Areas of published scholarship, presentations, and funded research include issues in special education, higher education, preservice teacher issues, inclusion, and novice teacher development.

Martina Dickson

Martina Dickson has held a variety of teaching and advisory positions in Greece, Oman, Hong Kong and the UAE. Her research interests include gender in education and science pedagogy. Over the last five years she has been the PI of a variety of studies, including Science Anxiety in UAE students, Gendered Science Identities, and Girls’ and Boys’ Science Classroom Choices. She holds a PhD in Physics from the University of London and MA in Gender, Education and International Development from the IoE (UCL) in London.

Patricia Stringer

Patricia Stringer is involved with the Masters of Teaching and Learning degree at Auckland University of Technology. Her New Zealand experience in the primary education sector covers teaching, senior management roles and responsibilities and advisor to schools. At the tertiary level, Patricia has been involved in graduate and post graduate teacher education and Masters of Educational Administration programmes. Her international experience includes teaching and supervising students at a teacher training institution in Abu Dhabi, UAE. Patricia’s EdD focuses on capacity building for school improvement. Her research interests include teacher professional development, school improvement and educational leadership.