From western TESOL classrooms to home practice: a case study with two ‘privileged’ Saudi teachers

Abstract

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at the receiving end of Western TESOL training and as the recipient of Western TESOL pedagogical experiments, it is no longer valid to assume the enlightening and educating role of such training.

Keywords:

• English
• pedagogy
• TESOL
• Western-trained
• Saudi Arabia
• periphery contexts

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Osman Z. Barnawi

Dr Osman Z. Barnawi has a PhD in Composition and TESOL from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and a Master of Education in TESOL from the University of Exeter, UK. He is currently Director of the English Language Center at Royal Commission Colleges and Institutes, Yanbu, Saudi Arabia. He teaches at the Department of Applied Linguistics of RCY and holds an adjunct position at King Abdul Aziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. He has published extensively in international referred journals. He is also a regular presenter in local and international conferences. His research interests include second language writing, teachers’ identities, critical pedagogy, crisis leadership in higher education, performance assessment in higher education, language programme evaluation, curriculum design and development, and teacher education. Dr Barnawi can be contacted at [email protected].

Phan Le Ha

Dr Phan Le Ha is an associate professor of Education in the Department of Educational Foundations in the College of Education, University of Hawaii at Manoa, USA. She also holds adjunct and honorary positions at Monash University in Australia, Vietnam National University Hanoi, and University of Reading in the United Kingdom. Her expertise and research interests include international education, TESOL, identity studies, culture and pedagogy, academic writing and higher education. Dr Phan has published widely in these areas too. She can be contacted at [email protected].