Perceptions About the Dominance of English as a Global Language: Impact on Foreign-Language Teachers’ Professional Identity

ABSTRACT

Using a novel theoretical framework that incorporates teacher identity, a school as community of practice, and English as a global language from a linguistic-imperialism perspective, this qualitative interview study with foreign-language teachers in Scotland, France, and Germany (N = 13) explores connections between foreign-language-learning decline and the impact of this decline on teachers’ identity across the three countries. Findings indicate similar trends across contexts in the dominance of English over other languages (and the identities of those who teach them) and support previous research on the importance of considering subject area, and its valuing by a range of stakeholders, as fundamental to teacher identity. Directions are proposed for future research and practice that emphasise taking an interdisciplinary approach to the notion of a subject area’s decline.

KEYWORDS:

• English as an international language
• globalization
• identity construction
• language teaching
• teacher identity

Notes

1. Day et al. (2006, p. 611) have also outlined the relevance of these different levels in terms of conceptualising teacher identity, and my own approach takes some inspiration from this.

2. For all of these codes, the first letter is the initial of the country in which the teacher currently works and the second/third is that of the language(s) they teach.

3. I am using the communities-of-practice framework to conceptualise the abstract notion of school, rather than any one specific school, given that the teachers interviewed are employed at different educational institutions across three different countries.

4. Where the interview was conducted in French, I present the data in that original language, followed immediately by its English translation.

5. 1 + 2 refers to pupils having skills in their mother tongue plus two foreign languages.