The Lasting Effects of Teacher Education for Global Englishes Language Teaching: An Ethnographic Case Study

Abstract

Global Englishes Language Teaching (GELT) was developed as a pedagogical framework to prepare students for using English with socioculturally diverse English users. Implementing GELT requires teachers to reevaluate their classroom practices and redesign pedagogy to prepare students to use English in the globalized world where multilingualism is the norm. Teacher education plays a vital role in equipping teachers with the necessary knowledge and skills to implement GELT. Previous studies on teacher education for GELT (TE-GELT) have sought ways to educate teachers about GELT, but they were primarily short-term (16 hours to 4 months). Thus, this study fills a research gap by exploring the lasting effects of TE-GELT on a teacher’s classroom practices through a longitudinal study. Using an ethnographic case study design, the teacher was observed for one academic year (120 hours), triangulated with interviews (6 hours), and artifacts. Informed by language teacher cognition theory, the findings revealed that TE-GELT could help develop the teacher’s adequate knowledge and skills to implement GELT; however, classroom practices remained oversimplified, superficial, and had a partly inclusive application of the GELT framework. The findings suggested that TE-GELT, with the content-focused approach alone, might not be adequate to create lasting effects on teachers’ classroom practices.

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